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Using laminar-flow velocity profiles to locate the wall behind roughness elements

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Abstract

Boundary-layer experiments that use hotwire anemometry often perform least-squares fits of the boundary-layer velocity profile to estimate the position of the wall in the hotwire’s coordinate frame. This approach fails in the wake of roughness elements where the profile is nonlinear at the wall. A modified approach makes least-squares fits only at selected locations outside roughness wakes and estimates the wall location across entire lines using a function generated from these estimates. Comparing these two approaches shows that the first produces incorrect results just behind roughness elements but that the techniques produce identical results farther downstream.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for its support under grant F49620-02-1-0058. FGE thanks and acknowledges the Institute of International Education and the Case School of Engineering for supporting him with a Fulbright Fellowship and a Case Prime Fellowship, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44106-7222, USA

    E. B. White & F. G. Ergin

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  1. E. B. White
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  2. F. G. Ergin
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Correspondence to E. B. White.

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White, E.B., Ergin, F.G. Using laminar-flow velocity profiles to locate the wall behind roughness elements. Exp Fluids 36, 805–812 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-003-0766-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-003-0766-y

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